The Game Commission is expanding its Barn Owl Conservation Initiative into its Southwest Region by seeking information about active and historic barn owl nest sites.

The primary objective of this program is to locate and monitor barn owl nest sites and distribute nest boxes to interested landowners with suitable habitat to help reverse the population decline of this species.

Barn owls are medium-sized owls with a white face surrounded by a heart-shaped border. They typically have a white belly and a darker, tawny back. In Pennsylvania, barn owls primarily are associated with open grasslands such as meadows, hayfields, and fallow croplands. Open grassland habitat is essential for barn owls because meadow voles, which make up about 70 percent of their diet, are their primary food.

Barn owls also eat other rodents such as mice, rats, and shrews. In rare instances, when rodents are locally rare, barn owls may occasionally take small birds, such as starlings and red-winged blackbirds, that roost in open habitats. Because a typical family of barn owls will eat about 3,000 rodents over the course of the breeding and nesting season, barn owls are exceptionally valuable to farmers.

As their name implies, barn owls commonly nest in structures such as barns, silos and abandoned buildings. Barn owls will also nest in natural cavities such as holes in trees, rock crevices, and even burrows in riverbanks.

To determine if you have a barn owl on your property, look in barns, silos, abandoned buildings and below possible roost sites for regurgitated owl pellets, which are dense pellets of undigested fur and bone about one to two inches long. Also, after dark, listen for long hissing shrieks, which are very different from the typical "hoots" of most owls.

The Game Commission is specifically looking for information about barn owl activity in Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Cambria, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Somerset, Washington or Westmoreland counties, but welcome information for other counties as well."

If you have barn owls nesting on your property or would like to know how you can help conserve Pennsylvania's barn owls, contact Tammy Colt, Southwest Region Wildlife Diversity Biologists at 724-238-9523 or by mail to 4820 Route 711, Bolivar, PA 15923.

NewsClip: Game Commission Sets In as Barn Owls Dwindle

3/3/2006